The Cooperative Governance and Human Settlements Department in Mpumalanga says it is revising its support for municipalities struggling with their Eskom debt.

Five municipalities in the province, Emalahleni, Govan Mbeki, Lekwa, Mbombela, and Thaba Chweu, are among the 14 municipalities that owe a total of R62.3 billion.

Factors identified by the department as contributing to their inability to pay include high-interest rates from Eskom, maintenance costs of aging infrastructure and electricity theft.

Department Spokesperson Freddy Ngobe says they are working with the municipalities to ensure uninterrupted services.

“We also apply your IGR protocols between Eskom, ourselves and the municipality where we ensure that they have a plan of repayment. We also assist municipalities with debt collection strategies to ensure that there must be other forms of revenue generation, not necessarily on infrastructure or on electricity. So, with that, we’re hopeful that they will be turning the tide and we know that there’s some who are not really, really affording, owing to infrastructure, which is ageing, illegal electricity connections and so on, but at least that we constantly want them to ensure that they clear every day, they pay their part, and they also ensure that services are not affected,” says Ngobe.

The City of Mbombela Municipality currently owes Eskom about R2.6 billion.

Recently, R350 million was written off through the National Treasury’s debt-relief programme.

The municipality’s spokesperson, Joseph Ngala, has expressed council’s commitment to settling the remaining debt.

“We want to appreciate the fact that from time to time, Eskom set off some money that we are owing to them. But what we are doing as a city, we want to prioritise the Eskom debt. Each time we get money, before we use it for any other services, we want to prioritise our Eskom debt. We’ve taken a decision, as council, that we are going to do what we call daily payments between the region of R5 million to R10 million per day. We also want to enhance our collection rate from people that are owing us,” says Ngala.